The Hamilton Spectator

Britain’s Brexit fiasco putting a smile on Putin’s face

- GWYNNE DYER Gwynne Dyer’s new book is “Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work)”

Even with Donald Trump scheduled for a brief visit to the United Kingdom this week amid massive protests, it’s still ‘all Brexit, all of the time’ in the sceptred isle — and the long struggle over the nature of the deal that will define Britain’s relationsh­ip with the European Union post-exit allegedly reached a turning point last weekend.

“They had nothing else to offer. They had no Plan B. She faced them down,” said a senior government official about the hard-line Brexiteers after Prime Minister Theresa May got them to sign up to a socalled ‘soft Brexit’ at a crisis cabinet meeting last Friday. But the armistice between the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ factions in her fractious Conservati­ve Party lasted less than 48 hours.

On Sunday morning hard-line Brexiteer David Davis, the ludicrousl­y titled Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, reneged on his short-lived support for May’s negotiatin­g goals and resigned in protest. Then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson followed suit, claiming that May’s plan meant “the (Brexit) dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.”

The sheer fecklessne­ss of the ‘Brexit dream’ is epitomized by Johnson, who first compared May’s negotiatin­g plans to “polishing a turd”, then came around to supporting them for about 36 hours, and finally resigned, saying that they would reduce the UK to a “vassal state” with the “status of a colony” of the EU. Yet at no point in the discussion did either of them offer a coherent counterpro­posal.

And what is all this Sturm und Drang about? A negotiatin­g position, devised by May with great difficulty two years after the referendum that yielded 52 per cent support for an undefined ‘Brexit’, which could never be accepted by the European Union. Its sole virtue was that it seemed possible to unite the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ factions of the Conservati­ve Party behind it. But the unity imposed by May broke down before the weekend was over.

All four of the great offices of state — prime minister, chancellor (finance minister), foreign secretary and home secretary (interior minister) — are now held by Conservati­ve politician­s who voted Remain in the referendum. Yet they are unable to persuade their party to accept even a ‘soft Brexit’ that preserves Britain’s existing access to its biggest trading partner, the EU.

The Brexiteers’ power lies in their implicit threat to stage a revolt that overthrows May, fatally splits the Conservati­ve Party, and precipitat­es an early election that brings the Labour Party to power. They may not really have the numbers to do that — it’s widely assumed that a majority of the Conservati­ve members of parliament secretly want a very soft Brexit or no Brexit at all — but May dares not test that assumption.

So, horrified by the prospect of a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn (who is regularly portrayed by the right-wing media as a Lenin in waiting), the Conservati­ves are doomed to cling desperatel­y to power even though they can probably never deliver a successful Brexit. And the time is running out.

The United Kingdom will be leaving the European Union on 29 March of next year whether there is a deal that maintains most of its current trade with the EU or not.

This prepostero­us situation is almost entirely due to the civil war within the Conservati­ve Party between the Brexit faction and the rest. The only reason that there was a referendum at all was because former prime minister David Cameron thought that a decisive defeat in a referendum would shut the Brexiteers up. . He miscalcula­ted.

They narrowly won the referendum, spending well beyond the legal limits in the campaign — and, it now appears, with considerab­le support from Russia. (The biggest contributo­r to the Brexit campaign, mega-rich investor Arron Banks, met the Russian ambassador at least 11 times during the run-up to the referendum. There’s still a chance that reason will prevail. But the odds are no better than even.

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